Pam Adams: New plans for Peoria's old schools

Thursday

Aug 30, 2007 at 12:01 AMAug 30, 2007 at 1:56 PM

They couldn't call it a school reunion because they didn't all go to Manual High School. They couldn't call it a class reunion because they didn't all graduate in the same class. Some didn't graduate. “Old School Reunion” seemed like the obvious and appropriate choice for a name.

Pam Adams

They couldn't call it a school reunion because they didn't all go to Manual High School. They couldn't call it a class reunion because they didn't all graduate in the same class. Some didn't graduate. “Old School Reunion” seemed like the obvious and appropriate choice for a name.

Rosie Cole's laughter warms the telephone line. “You know you're old school when you can start naming schools and streets that no longer exist.”

The name may prove to be prophetic. But that's not what they were thinking at the time. They were thinking old days and good times and, as Elner Clark puts it, “a chance to see each other on a good note, not on a sad occasion.”

Clark is the one who tracked them down, called them up, convinced them five or six old friends could pull off a reunion in two weeks if they hustled. She had just moved back to Peoria after years away. She was feeling that universal urge to reunite with people, places and things she had missed, like a 40th class reunion.

If Manual's class of 1966 celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, she didn't hear about it. “So Eleanor said, 'Let's do something,’ '' says Cole. “That's the type of person she is.”

Last year's “Old School Reunion” was so successful on such short notice, they decided to do it again this year. Same time: noon the Saturday before Labor Day. Same place: Martin Luther King Park, the corner of McBean and MacArthur. Same loose guidelines: BYOBD, or bring your own best dish, and meet up with friends from the 1960s and '70s

In another time, many of them might have run in and out of Warner Homes. But Warner has been replaced.

On an easy summer day, many might have started at Carver Center and ended up at State Park. But State Park is no longer there.

Many of the public grade schools they knew are gone as they knew them - Lincoln, Washington, Webster, McKinley. Greeley. Or they're just gone - Douglas, Lee, Longfellow. Same for Catholic schools, such as St. Patrick's, Spalding, Academy of Our Lady.

They came through Peoria's four public high schools, two Catholic high schools, the civil rights movement, urban renewal, the Vietnam War. Shutting down, replacing and restructuring were the soundtrack of their youth. Because so many of them went to Manual, they remember when students marched from the old Manual to the new Manual in 1963. By neighborhood, by school, by coming-of-age reference points, this makes them contemporaries of Peoria School District 150 Superintendent Ken Hinton and Associate Superintendent Herschel Hannah, both Manual graduates from the 1960s.

When Otis Redding sang “A Change is Gonna Come,” they didn't dream it would come like this. They may be thinking old school, but their old classmates, Hinton and Hannah, are talking up new school and new schools.

With Peoria's public schools in the midst of grand plans to change the entire school- scape south of Forrest Hill, Hinton and Hannah are out front, with the School Board and other administrators, on potentially closing 11 schools, the most since, ironically, the 1960s. The closed schools could be replaced with six new ones.

At the same time as the district's overall “restructuring,” Manual is going through its own internal 'restructuring' because it hasn't met student achievement goals five consecutive years under the No Child Left Behind Act.

“Two things will happen for sure at Manual,” says Hannah. “There will be a longer year and a longer day.” Otherwise, no one knows what Manual will be by the 2008 school year, which brings anxiety and opportunity.

Depending on what the community wants and how the school board votes, Hannah says his alma mater could become a charter school or a school that goes from kindergarten through 12th grade. Students might attend Manual for the ninth and 10th grade years, then move to another school. Or it could be something altogether different. A small group of middle school students already has been attending classes in a separate wing at Manual since Blaine-Sumner Middle School closed two years ago.

Old school, new school, old Manual, new Manual. The phrases have double meanings these days. But the middle school students already at Manual may foretell what's in store at the new Manual. Or maybe not.

Pam Adams is a columnist with the Peoria Journal Star. Her e-mail address is padams@pjstar.com.